


Interlaced

by tamerofdarkstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Airplanes, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Auror Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Partners, Author has lost control of her life in a spectacular fashion, Bless the HP fandom for having an abundance of tags to use ily, Case Fic, Fluff, Holding Hands, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Seriously there's a significant amount of hand holding, Soft Boys, also some Terry Pratchett, and way more holding hands, but trust me, is there such a thing as too much hand holding?, shh let it happen, there's very little case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 01:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamerofdarkstars/pseuds/tamerofdarkstars
Summary: There's been some magical disturbances on several muggle flights from London to New York, and Harry and Draco are all over this one. Although, Harry suspects that Draco might not have agreed to take the case if he truly understood what it meant to have to sit through an eight hour flight.





	Interlaced

**Author's Note:**

> So I fly a lot. This was partially written in an airport during a layover and is the second thing I've written in the last few weeks that's just soft as all get out. 
> 
> This has not been Brit-picked and I am very American so any slang oddities or mistakes are my own!

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have just apparated,” hissed Draco in Harry’s ear.

Harry ignored him. Draco had kept up that mantra the entire process, grouching under his breath about the business of the terminal, the machines printing boarding passes, the security check line, and the long wait loitering at the gate, and frankly, Harry was about to strangle him with his bare hands, partner or not and wand be damned.

“Just put your bag up there,” he shot over his shoulder, pointing at the overhead compartments. He shoved his own bag into the compartment and ducked down, snagging the window seat before Draco could argue.

Draco scowled. He stood in the aisle, leather bag over one shoulder, looking unbearably good in crisply tailored muggle clothing, and Harry bit down on the compliment that bubbled up in his throat.

Draco Malfoy still maintained all the lean grace that had first drawn Harry’s eye in school, though he hadn’t quite recognized it for attraction at the time, and as infuriating as he could be, Harry still thought he was unfairly beautiful.

He briefly considered throwing himself out the aeroplane window, then decided against it. Far too dramatic. He had quite literally been dead before; he could handle a pretty blond.

“Put your bag up and sit down. You’re causing a back up,” Harry said. Draco muttered something unintelligible under his breath and shoved his bag up into the compartment next to Harry’s.

He slid into the seat, still scowling.

“Come on, now,” Harry said. He leaned forward and patted Draco on the back of the hand. Draco barely twitched at the contact and Harry was pleased, thinking back to those tumultuous first months when they’d been partnered together as Aurors fresh out of training. Draco had twitched at every brush of contact and conversation had been stilted and painfully awkward. What did you say to someone when you’d gone from trying to kill each other to saving each others’ lives to… whatever they were now?

Some old habits had certainly been hard to break, but to their surprise, Harry and Draco found they balanced each other nicely. An awkward partnership had turned into awkwardly having drinks after a shift had turned into something resembling friendship had turned into actual friendship. Harry found he quite liked Draco’s sarcastic biting humor, the quirk to the corner of his mouth when he’d said something he knew would make Harry laugh, the pleased grin on his face when they snuck out early on Fridays for a pint.

It took even longer for Harry to realize that he also liked the curl of Draco’s fingers around his wand, the lines of his body when he leaned against Harry’s desk, the flash of white teeth against pink lips as he worried at the skin nervously.

Harry realized his fingers were still tapping the back of Draco’s hand casually and he pulled his hand back. “Don’t scowl like that,” he said to fill the silence. “We’re on an aeroplane to catch whoever has been spending the last few weeks terrorizing muggle travelers. It’s an eight hour flight to New York, not the end of the world.”

“There has to be an easier way to do this,” Draco hissed, leaning close to Harry to whisper. “This is outrageous. How do muggles function like this?”

Harry snorted. “I don’t think most people are generally very excited to sit on a plane like this for eight hours.”

Draco sniffed. “Hopefully he’ll make a fuss with the muggles early. Then we can just obliviate them all and apparate out of here.”

Harry smothered a snort of laughter. “Uh, no, somehow I don’t think apparating off a moving plane over the Atlantic Ocean is going to end well for us. We’ll have to finish out the flight and nab a portkey or Floo back to London.”

Draco looked scandalized. In front of them, a head of curly black hair popped up over the seat. The little girl it belonged to studied them with wide unblinking eyes.

Harry gave her a little wave. Her eyes got huge and she ducked back behind the seat. There was a beat before her head slowly peeked up over the top of the seat again.

Harry stuck his tongue out at her and the girl let out a surprised giggle before a hand tugged on her shirt.

“Carla, love, sit back down.”

The little girl vanished and Harry smiled for a moment before turning his attention to the other passengers.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he noticed Draco staring, but when he turned his head, his partner was busying himself with his seat belt.

The plane slowly filled up and Harry surreptitiously studied his fellow passengers. Auror intelligence had done some brilliant work and pinpointed this particular flight as the next suspected target in a long line of magical disturbances that had plagued muggle flights for the last several weeks. Thankfully no one had been injured yet, but when the case file had come across his desk, Harry hadn’t hesitated in snatching it up.

The seat in front of Draco clicked and then reclined and Harry bit back a laugh as his partner recoiled back with a disgusted look.

“I don’t like this,” he snapped and Harry grinned at him.

“No one likes it.”

With a click, a crackling voice came over the loudspeaker. Harry leaned over to murmur in Draco’s ear. “That’s the safety announcement. Then we’ll taxi and take off. All by muggle machine – no magic at all.”

Draco moved his head, just a fraction, and skin brushed Harry’s lips. Harry jerked back, feeling heat creep up the back of his neck. Merlin’s beard, Potter, get it together. Just because you’ve fallen hard for your partner doesn’t mean you have to wave a bloody neon sign around about it.

“Er, and that’s it,” Harry said quickly. Draco looked like he wanted to say something, lips parting, before he gritted his teeth and looked away, up the aisle, where the flight attendant was demonstrating the proper way to fasten a seat belt.

Minutes later, the plane gave an almighty lurch and slowly started rolling away from the gate. Draco stiffened, just barely.

“How do we even know this bloody thing will fly,” Draco muttered under his breath, “without a single levitation charm?”

Harry shrugged. “Physics? I’ve been told that also works.”

The engines whined, pitching up to nearly a shriek, and the plane started to rumble down the runway.

Draco’s hands flew to the armrests, gripping them so hard his fingers went bloodless.

“Hey,” Harry said, glancing sideways at him. “It’s alright.”

“Shut up, Potter,” hissed Draco, squeezing his eyes shut. He must really be uncomfortable, Harry realized. It wasn’t often that Draco downgraded him to his last name anymore.

“Hey,” Harry said again, the wizard they were after momentarily flying from his head. He held up his hand over Draco’s, palm up, and waited. An offering.

The plane made one last whine and the nose tilted. Gravity sucked at his insides, greedily trying to keep them on the ground, and Harry’s head fell back against the headrest.

Draco sucked in a breath and grabbed his hand, squeezing it so hard he nearly cut off the blood flow.

Harry squeezed back and the plane steadily climbed higher into the sky, shaking violently as the wind whipped over the wings.

Unable to stop himself, Harry dragged the pad of his thumb across Draco’s knuckles. Draco’s hand twitched in his before clinging even tighter to a degree Harry hadn’t even realized was possible.

They sat in silence, Draco gripping his hand grimly like he expected the plane to explode into a thousand tiny pieces and kill them all.

Eventually, the shaking stopped and the plane settled into the sky, gliding smoothly. The whine of the engines was muted outside and above them, the seatbelt light dinged softly and went out.

“See? We made it,” Harry said brightly. “Just like riding a broomstick.”

Draco’s hand relaxed in his, just a fraction. “I can’t believe people willingly travel like this,” he mumbled.

Harry squeezed his hand. It wasn’t often Draco admitted to being afraid of anything, even begrudgingly like this. Harry hoarded every moment of softness jealously.

Draco’s eyes fell on their still joined hands.

“Oh. Sorry.” Harry quickly untangled their hands, pulling his own back into his lap. He curled his fingers into a fist, feeling the ghost touch of Draco’s fingers against his.

“It’s fine.” Draco’s face was pinched, teeth chewing on his lower lip. “It… helped.”

Harry grinned and Draco blanched. “Shut up,” he complained, folding his arms defensively over his chest. His pale cheeks glowed dully.

Harry chuckled, letting it go. “Let’s go over our plan,” he said, forcing himself into work mode. “We’ve got a little under seven hours to find this guy.”

Draco nodded, unclipping his seat belt. “I’ll take a walk to the front of the plane,” he said. “Do a quick sweep. Want to take the back?”

“Sure.” Harry undid his own belt and waited for Draco to slip out of his seat. He walked a little unsteadily down the aisle towards the front of the plane, hands braced on the headrests of the seats as he walked.

Harry shook his head, stepping out into the aisle and heading for the back of the plane. No one really jumped out at him – most passengers were sitting, staring aimlessly around the plane or reading or slipping their headphones on – and Harry made it all the way to the back of the plane without seeing any red flags or sensing any magic.

Thinking perhaps Draco had had more luck, he headed back to his seat. A flight attendant was coming his way and they awkwardly sidestepped each other in the tight aisle.

“Pardon me, sir,” she said, locking eyes with him.

She was blonde, small, and Harry nodded politely as she scooted past him.

Then he paused. She hadn’t been on the roster of flight attendant staff he’d reviewed before boarding the plane.

He went back to his seat to find Draco sitting in his seat, staring out the window at the clouds below the wing.

“Find anything?” Harry asked quietly, slipping into Draco’s abandoned aisle seat.

“No,” Draco admitted, looking disgruntled. “Everyone looks painfully ordinary.”

“I might have something.” Harry told him about the flight attendant.

Draco frowned. “She might have just taken an extra shift.”

“I thought of that, yeah. But we don’t have much else right now.”

Draco settled back into his seat, folding his arms over his chest. “So what now, then?”

Harry shrugged. “Wait until she tries something, I suppose. If we’re wrong and cause a panic, the real guy won’t try anything, will he?”

Draco considered this, then sighed. A grumpy furrow appeared between his brows and Harry heroically resisted the urge to smooth it out with the pad of his thumb. “So we just sit here? Doing nothing?”

Harry shrugged again, reaching into the magically expanded pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a worn paperback novel. “Read a book. Or watch a film on the screen there. Close your eyes and get some sleep for once. The world is your oyster.”

Draco rolled his eyes as Harry flicked open the book. He’d missed a lot of fiction growing up, and it was highly amusing to read fantasy fiction created by muggle authors. Some of them were almost close about the magical worlds – others were dead wrong, but still wildly creative, and in still more Harry found threads of truth so close to reality that he suspected the author of having at least a little magical blood in their family tree.

This Terry Pratchett fellow, though – he was a toss up. Harry was banking on magic blood, though he’d certainly never come across Discworld anywhere. Maybe Hermione could shed some light after they landed.

The armrest at his right shifted and Harry emerged from his book to see Draco struggling to lift it. He lifted his arm off the armrest and Draco jerked it up so there was nothing between them.

Harry raised an eyebrow. Draco scowled.

“It was bothering me.”

“The armrest… was bothering you.”

“Shut up, Potter.” But this time, his last name held no heat, and Harry bit back a smirk as Draco began obviously Not Looking at Him, instead folding his arms and closing his eyes, tilting his head against the seat.

Harry took one long, achingly guilty moment to let his eyes trace the line of Draco’s throat, the softness around his closed eyes, before forcing his attention back to his book.

Minutes slipped by and the plane remained calm and undisturbed.

Harry had just flipped a page when a warm weight settled against his arm. He glanced at Draco to find his partner soundly asleep, slumped against him, his wispy hair fallen over his eyes.

Harry smiled fondly at the top of his head and switched his book to his other hand.

He stared down at the words, letting them blur on the page as he cataloged the feeling of Draco’s head on his shoulder.

He wasn’t kidding himself. The domesticity of the moment was not lost on him. He’d told himself ages ago that his silly crush on his partner was his secret to keep. But every time he forced himself to push it from his mind, something like this happened. Something that sent his imagination into overdrive, picturing a future where maybe one day they might be more than just coworkers.

He let the book settle on his lap, thumb stuck in to mark his place, staring at the back of the seat in front of him.

Draco made a snuffling noise and shifted against him, turning his face into the crook of Harry’s neck.

Harry sighed, slipping his thumb out of the book and letting it fall shut so he could reach up and carefully brush Draco’s hair back out of his eyes.

In the seats in front of them, the mother was murmuring to the little girl with the curly hair, telling her to sit down and watch the film, there’s a love, and ahead in the aisle, the blonde flight attendant was pushing the beverage cart carefully between the seats.

Harry watched the flight attendant pour some Sprite into a small plastic cup and hand it to the passenger at her elbow.

He must have blinked then, because one moment the Sprite was in the attendant’s hand, and the next it was upturned on the passenger’s shiny bald head.

The bald man let out a yelp of dismay, scrambling out of his seat, getting briefly stuck against the tray table as he fought his way past the drink cart and into the aisle proper.

The attendant was apologizing frantically, reaching for napkins, and Harry tapped Draco’s thigh.

“Draco, wake up.”

Draco grumbled something unintelligible into his shoulder and Harry turned his head, bumping his nose into the top of his partner’s head and inhaling a sweet breath of Draco’s cologne. “Draco!” he hissed.

“Bloody hell, Harry,” Draco mumbled into the crook of his neck.

Heads were craning as most of the plane looked around to watch the man go storming up the aisle for the lavatory. The flight attendant was scarlet, clearly embarrassed.

Harry felt Draco go suddenly stiff against him and in the next instant he’d snapped back, back against the window, as much distance as possible between them.

“You fell asleep,” Harry said, trying his best not to feel disappointed.

A dull red flush was creeping its slow way up Draco’s neck and he seemed to have lost his ability to speak.

“It’s fine, Draco,” Harry huffed impatiently. “You can fall asleep on me anytime. I’m just happy you’re actually getting some sleep for once.”

Draco pressed his lips tight together and said nothing. Harry ignored him, angry at Draco for being a prat about it and angry at himself for being angry about it.

If Draco _wanted_ to be a prat about a little human contact then fine. Let him. Harry had a disturbance to quiet.

He nodded at the drink cart. “Flight attendant just dumped Sprite on someone. I didn’t see her hand move. But then, didn’t see a wand either.”

Draco took a visibly deep breath. “Levitation?” His voice was still rough with sleep. Harry pretended not to notice.

“Maybe.”

Business settled over them both, the work coming before interpersonal feelings, and Harry was glad for it. This at least they were both good at.

“She’s coming this way,” Draco murmured. There was a crease from Harry’s jacket on his cheek. Harry was also pretending not to notice this. And quite heroically at that, he might add.

The drink cart stopped at the row in front of them. “Drink, ma’am?”

“Tea for me and an orange juice for her, please.”

The attendant began making the drinks. In front of them, the little girl’s voice rose up in protest. “I don’t want orange juice! I want Sprite!”

“No soda until we land, Carla, I told you.”

“But I want!”

“Carla, dear, that’s enough.”

Harry kept his eyes on the flight attendant, looking for the presence of a wand or the jerk of her hands in any strange ways.

But she did nothing but pour the juice, handing it to the mother in front of Harry, and then passing over the tea.

But as she turned with the tea in hand, a yelp went up from the row in front of the mother and the little girl with the curls.

“Oi! ‘Scuse me, Miss, but this isn’t coffee! It’s soda!”

The flight attendant looked around, bewildered. “But… I gave you coffee, sir, that’s a coffee cup.”

“Listen, love, I’ve been drinking coffee a long time, I know what it bloody tastes like.”

Harry and Draco exchanged a quick look when suddenly, as the harried flight attendant turned to the complaining businessman in complete bewilderment, every drink on the drink cart in front of her promptly exploded.

The plane erupted into pandemonium as fizzy drink went everywhere, splashing in a wide arc on the five rows in front of and behind the drink cart, completely dousing the passengers.

Harry got a face full of filtered water, the bottles seeming to aim for him directly, and blindly plunged his hand into his jacket for his wand.

Draco beat him there. “ _Finite incantatum!_ ”

The drink cart froze, drink arcing in huge sprays suspended in midair, liquid glittering under the washed out plane lights.

Harry sighed, glancing at his partner. “Nice.” He scrubbed at his eyes, trying to sop up some of the water with his damp shirtsleeve.

Draco looked to have escaped most of the blast – Harry suspected he’d used him as a shield, the cheeky bastard – and he was already siphoning what little sticky soda there was from his slacks with his wand.

Harry raked his fingers through his sopping hair and shoved himself up and out of the seat into the aisle.

Carla, the little girl, was crying in big frightened hiccups. Most of the people on the plane were gaping at them, eyes huge, and Harry hunched his shoulders, uncomfortable with the staring. He freed his wand from his jacket and with a wave, settled the beverage cart back to its normal state.

“Holy fucking shit,” breathed a girl two rows back.

Draco stood up as well and put his wand to his throat. “ _Sonorus_. Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm. This will be nothing but a distant memory soon.”

Harry suppressed a grin at the almost political level of calm in Draco’s voice. “Miss?” he said to the terrified flight attendant. “Can you come with us for a moment? We’d like to have a word.”

The flight attendant clearly did not want to go anywhere near them. “Who are you people?”

“Well, I’m Harry,” said Harry. He nodded. “That’s my partner Draco. We’re… law enforcement. Of a sort.”

The flight attendant gaped at him. “You don’t think this was...” she trailed off and it took Harry a beat to realize she was probably thinking something far more terrible was going on and he quickly shook his head.

“No, ma’am, we’ll explain everything in a moment. If you’ll just come with us—”

“Harry.”

Harry glanced around. Draco nodded at the drink cart. There, hovering over the cart, was a bottle of Sprite, pouring itself into a little plastic cup. The entire plane watched as the cup floated itself, smooth and silent and gentle as you please, over to where Carla was reaching up, a big happy smile on her face, her tears since dried.

“Ohh,” Harry breathed. Of course. The incidents – they weren’t sabotage by a prankster wizard. It was a child whose magic was manifesting. Her mother probably had no idea her daughter was a witch.

Harry glanced at Draco, who nodded and headed towards the front of the plane, wand out. Draco would take care of wiping the memories of the other passengers. Harry smiled at the flight attendant. “Why don’t you go back and refill the drink cart? We’ll take it from here.”

“Are you sure?” The flight attendant whispered. She looked a bit pale and Harry dug in his pocket, pulling out a small candy wrapped in foil.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “Eat this. It will help settle your nerves.”

She took the candy wordlessly and Harry felt a pang, somewhere behind his rib cage, and resolved to visit Teddy the moment they got back to London.

He crouched down on the balls of his feet next to the mother, who was young and rather pretty, staring at her tiny daughter with an expression of disbelief on her face.

“Hello,” Harry said. “My name’s Harry. Can I have a word?”

-

The flight passed without any more mishaps. As Auror missions went, honestly, it was rather anticlimactic. Harry figured it would probably take less than an hour to write everything up once they arrived back in London.

Carla’s mother – Loraine, she’d said, shaking Harry’s hand with a dazed look on her face – had been eager to learn, mystified but excited to find out that her daughter had magical blood.

“I wonder if it’s from her father’s side?” she’d babbled at Harry as Carla happily drank another Sprite, kicking her feet and staring out the window. “Although, I’ve always thought my Uncle Ernest was a bit of an odd one.”

Apparently, they’d been taking a flight back and forth between London and New York a lot in the past month, preparing for a big family wedding that was to take place in the States. Harry suspected that if he compared Loraine and Carla’s tickets to the dates of the disturbed flights, he’d find a perfect match.

Harry smiled to himself as the loudspeaker crackled, the Captain announcing the plane’s descent. He was pretty positive that Carla and Loraine would be just fine.

“Harry,” Draco said, voice a little uncertain. Harry tore himself out of his own thoughts and turned to look at his partner. Draco was staring down out the window, watching as the buildings got steadily bigger as they approached JFK. He held out his hand, palm up.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Draco looked around at him then, his fingers curling awkwardly and Harry sighed.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He reached out and took Draco’s hand before he could withdraw it, giving it a squeeze. “Landing’s worse. I’m just warning you now.”

They sat like that for a moment, as the plane dipped lower and lower in the sky, their fingers interlaced.

Finally, Draco cleared his throat. “Listen. Harry. It’s not… that is, I don’t really know—”

He stopped, apparently frustrated, and Harry rested his head back against the headrest, letting it fall to the side so he could look at Draco.

Draco was scowling down at his knees.

Harry, despite himself, felt his irritation fade into soft affection. Honestly, it wasn’t Draco’s fault. Neither of them really knew how to be friends with each other, did they? They were constantly learning each other, pushing away and then reaching out and pulling back.

“Draco. It’s fine.”

“It’s _not_ fine, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Draco chewed for a moment on the inside of his cheek. Around them, the plane rumbled, pinching at the insides of Harry’s guts as they puttered slowly towards the ground.

Harry focused on their fingers for a moment, laced together easily, comfortably on the armrest that had since been pulled back down between them.

Something tickled in the back of his mind. Harry suspected he knew what Draco was trying to address. Embarrassment tightened his throat and slicked his palms. Was Draco trying to tell him he didn’t want to be partners anymore? Had Harry given up the game that badly that Draco didn’t even feel comfortable working together?

But then, why would he still be holding Harry’s hand like it was the only thing keeping him grounded?

“Draco. Is this about… well.” Harry found it was difficult to put it into words. Draco glanced at him, something like alarm in his eyes.

For a moment, they just sat, the silence extremely awkward between them.

The plane whistled through the air and, just as Draco took a short breath, determination written all over his face, the wheels clunked out from beneath them and the color drained from his face.

“Bloody—”

The expletive cut off in the middle as the plane hit the runway with a thump, jarring them both. Harry let his head fall back against the headrest, allowing inertia to take over as the aeroplane thundered down the landing strip.

It screamed to a halt, slowing then stopping completely. Around them, passengers began scrambling out of their seats, anxious to be the first people to grab their luggage and then stand in the aisle of the plane for an indeterminable amount of time as the ground crew hooked up to the bridge.

Draco let out a sigh, dragging the hand that was not cutting off Harry’s circulation over his face.

Suddenly, his partner looked very tired.

“Hey,” Harry said, giving his hand a squeeze. Draco peeked at him through his fingers. “You did it. No more muggle transport for you.”

“That’s a relief.” Draco dropped his hand and his gaze fell on their joined fingers. Something crossed his face, something resigned.

Harry waited.

“Listen, Harry,” Draco said quietly as all around them, people shuffled and chattered and gathered up their things. “I’m not… I’ve done some things, you know, that I’m not exactly proud of.”

“If you’ll recall, Draco, I was there for most of them.”

Draco shot him a scowl and Harry smiled innocently.

“The point is… well, I’m not very, ah, very good at, at this.”

So he was dissolving their partnership. Harry sighed and went to disentangle their fingers, but Draco’s hand spasmed in his and stilled his movements. He looked at his partner in surprise.

_Ah, just get it over with, Harry. Rip that bandage off._

“Listen, Draco,” Harry said quietly. “I get that I’m not… well. That the last person you want to develop...”

He was finding it difficult to put into words. The idea of going back to the Ministry without Draco was incredibly depressing. All around them, people chattered and shuffled and gathered up their things.

_Damn it, Potter, you faced down Voldemort! Twice! Just spit it out!_

“I get that I’m the last person you want to have developed, er, feelings. For you. But I think…” Harry swallowed, chickening out of looking directly at his partner and instead giving his speech to the headrest in front of him. “I think we work really well together and, well, I don’t want to stop. Working with you, that is. And my feelings haven’t wrecked any of our cases yet. So if, um, that’s alright with you...”

Draco was silent and Harry, gritting his teeth in preparation for what he might find, gathered himself and finally looked his way.

Draco was staring at him like he’d never actually seen him before, like Harry was some new species of magical creature and they were thirteen again, standing in the woods with Hagrid.

“Draco?” Harry asked. The queue of people waiting to de-plane slowly started to shuffle forward and when he received no reply, Harry gently pulled his hand away from Draco’s and undid his seat belt.

“You don’t have to answer now,” Harry said quietly. “Just think about it. I really do think we make a great team.”

Draco made a noise in the back of his throat and grabbed Harry’s shoulder, stopping him from standing. “Why,” he snapped, something like fury wiping out the surprise on his face, “do you always have to bloody show me up, Potter? Why?”

Harry blinked. “Er, what now?”

Draco threw his hands up, staring up at the ceiling of the plane. “Merlin’s beard, I don’t deserve this. First you’re there, looking all stupid and windswept like you’ve never even heard of styling your hair and _then_ you and your bloody hand holding and the book and being warm and stupid and making faces at the little girl and just—”

“Are you alright? Do you need a doctor, maybe?”

“Shut the hell up, Potter, let me finish,” Draco growled, leveling a stern glare his way. Harry raised both eyebrows, hands up defensively.

“See? That! Exactly that! You just… just…!” Draco huffed, crossing his arms, and it was then Harry noticed the color slowly pooling in Draco’s pale cheeks. “You’re just so bloody wonderful,” Draco muttered then, gaze dropping to his knees.

Harry’s mouth fell open in surprise.

“And here I was, trying to figure out a way to tell you that. And then you go and confess first. What did you think I was trying to do here?”

Harry blinked. “Er, I thought maybe you’d… figured out how I felt and didn’t want to be partners anymore?”

Draco stared at him. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What pathetic romance novel did you pull that one from?”

“Not important,” Harry mumbled and Draco’s lips twitched then, as though he were biting back a smile.

Harry smiled awkwardly back. There was something very much like hope worming its way up into his chest, wrapping itself around his heart and pulsing happily, and Harry found he felt lighter than he had in days.

“So,” he said, feeling the grin spread wide across his face. “You like me then? You fancy me?”

Draco turned an abrupt scarlet, which was positively delightful.

“Shut up,” he muttered, but the duck of his head told a different story. Harry held out a hand and after a moment, Draco begrudgingly took it.

“Because I quite fancy you,” Harry said cheerfully, giving his hand a squeeze. “And I’d very much like to drag you to one of these horrific American bars for a drink and some food and then maybe even snog you afterwards, if that’s not too much trouble.”

Draco was silent for a beat, perhaps two. Then his features melted from disbelief and nervousness to a soft, almost shy smile, and Harry felt his heart thump.

“That would be acceptable,” he said and for a moment, they just grinned helplessly at each other.

Behind Harry’s shoulder, a throat cleared, awkwardly. “Sirs?”

They turned; it was the blonde flight attendant. She smiled at them, her memory of the soda incident gone without a trace. “I’ll be needing you both to de-plane now so I can prepare the cabin for the next flight.”

“Oh!” Harry realized with a start they were the last two on the plane. “Sorry about that.”

He squeezed Draco’s hand again and released him, sliding out of his seat. After a moment, Draco followed him. Harry grabbed his bag from the overhead compartment, then grabbed Draco’s and handed it off to him.

They walked down the aisle, past the empty seats and to the front of the plane.

It wasn’t until they were out into JFK proper, through their gate, that Draco paused. Harry glanced at him over his shoulder, shifting his bag up so he could get to his wand if needed. Probably not necessary, but it was nice to be prepared.

“Harry.”

Harry waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. “Yes?”

Draco was gazing at him, a rueful twist to his lips. He shook his head, the smile growing wide and bright, as though he was having trouble biting it back. “Nothing. Shall we go for that drink then? Or just stand around here appreciating the planeport?”

Harry laughed. “That’s absolutely not what it’s called and you know it.”

“Whatever. I’ll never need to know the word again, will I? Bloody muggle transportation.”

Harry felt the same smile, that uncontrollable grin cross his own face. “I think a drink sounds like a great idea.”

He held out his free hand, after a moment, Draco stepped in close and curled their fingers together.

It was amazing how easy it felt.

“Wipe that goofy grin off your face, Potter,” Draco murmured, but there was nothing but amusement in his low voice.

Harry snickered. “Speak for yourself, Malfoy.”

“Oh, shut up.”

But neither of them stopped grinning all the way out the airport and into the fresh evening air.

**Author's Note:**

> (The working title for this fic might or might not have been "Aurors on a Plane")


End file.
